Short Interest in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) Decreases By 20.5%

EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) saw a significant drop in short interest in September. As of September 30th, there was short interest totalling 11,500,000 shares, a drop of 20.5% from the September 15th total of 14,470,000 shares. Based on an average trading volume of 1,550,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 7.4 days.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research analysts recently weighed in on SATS shares. UBS Group lifted their price target on EchoStar from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 13th. Raymond James lowered EchoStar from a “strong-buy” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 1st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reissued an “underweight” rating and set a $12.00 price objective on shares of EchoStar in a research note on Monday, August 12th. Morgan Stanley lifted their target price on EchoStar from $14.00 to $20.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, September 13th. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded EchoStar to a “sell” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 30th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have issued a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $23.00.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. GAMMA Investing LLC grew its stake in EchoStar by 125.3% during the 2nd quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 1,442 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $26,000 after buying an additional 802 shares during the last quarter. Hexagon Capital Partners LLC grew its stake in EchoStar by 694.8% during the 2nd quarter. Hexagon Capital Partners LLC now owns 1,677 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $30,000 after buying an additional 1,466 shares during the last quarter. Eagle Bay Advisors LLC grew its stake in EchoStar by 183.6% during the 1st quarter. Eagle Bay Advisors LLC now owns 2,269 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $32,000 after buying an additional 1,469 shares during the last quarter. Quarry LP purchased a new position in shares of EchoStar in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $41,000. Finally, Nisa Investment Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of EchoStar by 122.9% in the 2nd quarter. Nisa Investment Advisors LLC now owns 4,199 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $75,000 after purchasing an additional 2,315 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 33.62% of the company’s stock.

EchoStar Stock Up 0.8 %

SATS stock traded up $0.21 during mid-day trading on Monday, reaching $25.16. The company had a trading volume of 879,573 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,821,638. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.00, a quick ratio of 0.32 and a current ratio of 0.40. The company has a market capitalization of $6.84 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.93 and a beta of 0.71. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $21.86 and a 200 day simple moving average of $18.91. EchoStar has a fifty-two week low of $9.53 and a fifty-two week high of $30.08.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Friday, August 9th. The communications equipment provider reported ($0.76) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.37) by ($0.39). The company had revenue of $3.95 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.98 billion. EchoStar had a negative net margin of 18.65% and a positive return on equity of 0.18%. EchoStar’s revenue for the quarter was down 9.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $0.39 EPS. Analysts forecast that EchoStar will post -1.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

EchoStar Company Profile

EchoStar Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides networking technologies and services worldwide. The company operates in four segments: Pay-TV, Retail Wireless, 5G Network Deployment, Broadband and Satellite Services. The Pay-TV segment offers a direct broadcast and fixed satellite services; designs, develops, and distributes receiver system; and provides digital broadcast operations, including satellite uplinking/downlinking, transmission and, other services to third-party pay-TV providers; and multichannel, live-linear and on-demand streaming over-the-top internet-based domestic, international, Latino, and Freestream video programming services under the DISH and SLING brand names.